Starring Louis Koo, Lau Ching-Wan, Philip Keung, Carina Lau, Tse Kwan Ho, Wan Guopeng, Wu Qian, He Guoxuan and So Yuet-Yin. Written by Lau Ho-Leung and Mak Tin-Shu. Directed by Ng Yuen Fai and produced by Tang Wai-But for One Cool Film Production, Media Asia Films & Hua Wen Movie Group.

Numerous wars and the ongoing destruction of the environment lead to an increase in dangerous toxins in the air, so the people of a desperate future Earth begin to build Skynet domes in the hope of providing better air for its citizens… but then a meteorite crashes earthwards, releasing a giant, ever-growing alien plant that begins to infest an urban region known as B16. This voracious vegetation, codenamed Pandora, expands in deadly bursts during heavy rainfall, and a squad of soldiers from B16’s Air Combat Unit are sent on a mission to locate Pandora’s hidden pistil (its reproductive centre) so that they can detonate a ‘gene bullet’ in the hope that it will reprogram the enormous plant to become a docile cleanser of Earth’s atmosphere… but our heroes must do this before the next major rainstorm, or the authorities will be forced to heavily bomb Pandora, which will result in a heavy loss of human life in the surrounding city. To make matters even more difficult, there is a traitor who wants this mission to fail…

The visuals for WARRIORS OF FUTURE can sometimes become really overloaded with CGI, but at least the quality of the special effects is much better than those seen in similar flicks. We get to see vast, vine-shrouded cityscapes, tiltrotor aircraft firing at angry plant appendages, collapsing buildings and crashing military hardware. The helmer of this Hong Kong action-sci-fi fest is Ng Yuen Fai, who usually works as a visual effects supervisor, so it’s hardly surprising this production is chock-full of special effects eye candy.

After the attack fleet gets heavily depleted, partly due to sabotage, the few surviving soldiers are aided by military desk jockey Johnson Cheng (Ching-Wan) and an ex-soldier called Skunk (Keung). With time running out, the group attempts to complete their mission, but now they must defend themselves from swarms of human-sized bug/crustacean creatures too! These alien critters have mandibles, teeth, four eyes, can communicate using their vibrating neck-plates, and resemble feral versions of the ‘prawns’ from DISTRICT 9 (2009). As I’m an avid movie monster fan, I was delighted, of course, to see these beasties, though, from a plot perspective, they do tend to make you forget that the Pandora plant, often dormant and offscreen between rainfall scenes, is supposed to be the main threat. It is eventually revealed, however, that these chitinous creatures actually originate from Pandora’s pistil.

Characterisations are sketchy, with Tyler (Koo) given the kind of parent-grieving-a-dead-child backstory we’ve seen too many times before, whilst quirky Skunk is provided with a minor character arc when he proves himself to be a dependable soldier once more. Lau Ching-Wan, reliably stoic as Johnson, is perfectly fine in his role, but he really needed more from the script to have any chance of properly fleshing out his character. The by-the-numbers plotting means this film, ultimately, is similar to other throwaway sci-fi spectaculars like THE TOMORROW WAR (2021), but, hey, WARRIORS OF FUTURE still managed to grab my attention as the storyline progressed. Let’s find out why…

A sequence within a crumbling tower block, where Tyler and Johnson try to retrieve the gene bullet from a vehicle dangling high up above the ruins, is satisfyingly tense, pulling you into the adventure. Even more exciting and gripping is a chase set piece that follows, with the heroes hurtling along an elevated, deserted highway in an armoured truck, pursued by rogue military robots. Lots of ordnance is fired and lots of stuff gets wrecked! This is a high-octane burst of kinetic, tough, computer game-like sci-fi action; when all the cluster bombs and bullets are used up, the combatants resort to fighting with axes, knives and even a car door! Ticking clocks are also used well, with characters always on the back foot as they race against time to reach their goals before the next storm arrives and the entire area gets bombed to smithereens.

The film boasts some hellishly cool hardware; everything from the Air Combat Unit’s Orca aircraft, the nifty, powered exo-suits with in-helmet comm systems, and a walking robo-tank that’s reminiscent of a similar machine in GHOST IN THE SHELL (1995).

The script is nothing to write home about, but this is a thrilling, big-scale Hong Kong sci-fi crowd-pleaser. Bug-monsters, explosions, utterly huge extraterrestrial tendrils, rocket launchers, robots, mass property destruction and slo-mo future combat: what’s not to like?!